Oak and Dagger

by Dorothy St. James

  “I had no other choice,” he said, sounding defeated. “Someone within the agency had sold our identities to the KGB. After your mother died, I couldn’t risk losing you. So I made sure your paperwork—and your identity—was lost. Your life was still in danger. I’m sorry, Casey.”

  “And after you found the leak in the agency? Why didn’t you come back then?”

  “I sent you to your grandmother. She knew how to care for you.”

  I clung to my anger. Without it, I’d have completely fallen apart. “And that’s supposed to explain why you never came back? Why you never visited? Why you abandoned your only daughter?”

  “Don’t you see? I did what was best for you. I kept you safe. If I had been able to choose, I would have died that night! But I didn’t. So I had to continue the work your mom and I were doing. And I couldn’t do it with a child to worry about.”

  “How dare you.” I couldn’t stay here and listen to this. I jumped up from the sofa and started for the exit. “You didn’t die. I don’t know what I’m doing here. You should have never gotten Mom mixed up in your dangerous world in the first place.”

  “It didn’t happen that way.” He thumped his cane on the floor several times. “Emma, she recruited me. Espionage and counterintelligence was her life, and she was damn good at it, too. I would have never asked her to quit.”

  “So you’re blameless. Is that what you’re saying?” I slashed my hand through the air as I hurried toward the exit. “No, don’t try and defend yourself. Don’t tell me how hard it was for you. You weren’t there for us. You didn’t have to watch her die. And as far as I’m concerned, you’re not here, either.”

  • • •

  THE DYING SUN’S ANGRY RED STREAKS JUTTING across the late afternoon sky matched my mood. My nails dug so deeply into the palms of my hands as I emerged from the Metro station and marched across McPherson Square, I wondered if I’d drawn blood.

  Boy, oh boy, that man and his empty explanations could make even a preacher cuss. The nerve of him. He hadn’t even bothered to apologize. If he’d had, I would have thrown it back in his face. No apology could absolve him of his sins. Even if he hadn’t killed my mom, by running away from his responsibilities and abandoning his only child, he had destroyed his family just as effectively as those murderers who had stolen my mom from me. There was no forgiving that.

  I darted across the street against the light and followed Vermont Avenue to Lafayette Square. Unlike my father, I didn’t shirk my responsibilities. Despite everything that had happened today, I was determined to get Seth those plans for the rescheduled tree planting.

  I crossed the seven-acre Lafayette Square, and even though I knew he wouldn’t be there, I deliberately kept my gaze turned away from the empty spot where my father, for months, had set up his lawn chair and had held his protest sign directly across the street from the White House.

  Some men spent their retirement years golfing. Others honed their woodworking skills in the garage. My father apparently chose to spend his golden years spying on his estranged daughter. Lucky me.

  I’d been so wrapped up in my own maelstrom of emotions I almost didn’t notice Lorenzo leaning against a rake next to a large oak tree. The first thing wrong about this picture was that Lorenzo was dressed in one of the grounds office’s dark blue windbreakers. He rarely wore his. And while both Gordon and I occasionally pitched in and helped the grounds crew with the lawn work, Lorenzo nearly always found an excuse.

  Not that he was actually doing any work now.

  I crossed the park to find out what he was up to.

  “Lettie.” He drummed his fingers on the rake’s handle. He gestured with his chin in the direction of a bench a few hundred yards away. The First Lady’s sister, dressed in old jeans and a sweatshirt and with an oversized hobo bag slung over her shoulder, paced back and forth in front of the bench.

  Unlike immediate members of the First Family, extended family members could come and go without Secret Service protection. For the most part they remained anonymous. Just last week, I’d bumped into Lettie at the nearby convenience store and was the only one in the shop that knew she was related to the First Family.

  “What is she doing?” I asked as I watched Lettie continue to pace, taking the same path over and over in front of the bench.

  “Don’t know,” Lorenzo answered without taking his eyes off her.

  “If she keeps that up, she’s going to kill the grass.”

  Lettie abruptly stopped pacing as if she’d heard my complaint. I held my breath, afraid she’d caught us watching her. Her gaze passed over us and then shifted to her watch. She said something and then started pacing again.

  “She’s waiting for someone. Perhaps the journalist you’d heard her talking with this morning?” I wondered aloud as I scanned the park’s seven acres.

  “Probably.” Lorenzo slumped against the rake’s handle. “Not that it matters anymore. Once Manny talks with Gordon, it’ll be all over for him.”

  “Maybe not,” I said. “Gordon didn’t exactly say he killed Frida.”

  “It sure sounded that way to me.”

  “He was coming out of a medically induced coma. He was groggy and confused.” My father had been right about one thing. If I believed in my heart that Gordon was innocent, it was my duty to stand up for him. Gordon would do no less for me. “We need to protect him.”

  “How? We need to face the facts, Casey. He was alone in the garden with Frida. She had needled and needled him all day. On top of that, she’d destroyed his wife’s career and now it looked as if she was out to destroy his. He cracked.”

  Lorenzo thrust the shovel’s handle at me. “I can’t stand here and try to prove a lie. I can’t. Milo dug those damned holes in the lawn. They don’t coincide with any garden structures that would have been there in 1814 when the British invaded. I’ve looked and looked through our historic documents. And there’s nothing there. There’s no treasure. No treasure hunter. No killer.” Tears brightened his eyes. He lifted his hand when I tried to speak and swiftly turned away. “I love that man. But . . . I can’t defend a lie.”

  “Lorenzo, wait.”

  “Sorry, Casey.” Lorenzo headed back toward the White House. “I can’t do this anymore. I’m simply a gardener.”

  I glanced over at Lettie to see if she’d noticed our argument. She continued to pace and seemed to be in an agitated world of her own.

  Since I was standing in the grass with a rake in my hand and doing nothing but watching Lettie, I decided to keep myself occupied and rake up some of the leaves that had dropped from the park’s forest of towering trees.

  After several minutes, Lettie brushed off the bench she’d been pacing in front of and sat down. She fished around in her oversized hobo bag and pulled out a file folder stuffed with papers and marked with the presidential seal. That looked official. Using my raking as a cover, I inched closer.

  She opened the folder and started flipping through the pages. I needed to get closer to see what was in the file. Gripping the rake handle tightly in my hand, I crossed the distance between us.

  “It is you,” I said with a great big smile plastered on my lips.

  She slammed the file folder closed before I could see any of the papers it contained. “Oh, I didn’t see you there, Cathy.”

  “Casey,” I corrected. “Do you mind if I join you?” I asked, and then without waiting for an invitation, sat down on the bench next to her. I pointed to a wall of dark clouds. “Looks like another storm will be rolling in.”

  “Right,” she said, not following the direction of my gaze. “A storm.”

  “I like to come out here when I need to think things through.” I tapped the rake. “Luckily for me, there’s never any shortage of gardening tasks. You should see me in the spring. I can get a whole mess of thinking done then.”

  “I see,” Lettie said as she scanned the park as if searching for someone.

  “So I’ve been raking leaves just now an
d thinking. And do you know what I can’t seem to figure out?”

  “How should I know?” She kicked a pebble with her boot.

  “Well, I’ve been thinking about Frida’s murder and how Frida was looking for Jefferson’s lost treasure. Those two events must be connected, don’t you agree?”

  “I don’t know.” Lettie scanned the park again. I got the distinct impression that she wanted to push me off the bench and tell me to go away.

  “You don’t have any ideas? I just thought you could help make things clear in my head since you have a mind as sharp as the fictional Miss Marple’s.”

  Lettie’s mood brightened in response to my praise. “I am rather clever when it comes to mysteries. I never reach the end of a novel without already guessing the who, what, when, and where of the crime.”

  “So do you think the killer is searching for the treasure?” I asked.

  “Seems like the most reasonable assumption. Who knows, maybe Gordon needed money. Or perhaps it was as Frida had claimed—professional jealousy.”

  “Yes. Yes, I suppose that could be it.” I rubbed my chin thoughtfully. “But why would he need to steal Frida’s notes when he knew just as much, if not more, about the gardens than anyone else at the White House? Why not just dig up the treasure before Frida could?”

  “Maybe he didn’t know as much as he led everyone to believe. People do that, you know. People hide behind all kinds of lies and masks.” She turned and looked me in the eye. “It’s hard sometimes, you know? There’s so much pressure to be the perfect sister, the perfect wife. But I’m just me. And I’m far from perfect. Maybe Gordon felt that way.”

  “Or perhaps someone else killed Frida? Someone with a background in history but only a basic knowledge of White House lore.” I drew a deep breath and forged forward. “Someone who is being pressured to pay a large sum of money and has to do whatever she can to get whoever she owes off her back. You know what I mean?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she answered and pretended to wave me off. But I could tell by the way she’d jerked as I’d laid out my scenario that I’d hit too close to the truth. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m meeting someone. I have to go.” She stood up without bothering to zip up her hobo bag. Her quick movements caused the bag to tip to one side, spilling its contents.

  The camera she’d been using earlier in the day to capture pictures of her sister and nephews landed hard with a thud on the hard-packed soil beneath the bench, which was nearly as hard as steel. The file folder slid to the ground next to it.

  “What have you done?” Lettie dropped to her knees and grabbed the camera. “Please, don’t be broken.”

  I picked up the file folder but watched over her shoulder as she flipped through a few of the pictures. In the file folder I found printouts of the amateur shots she’d taken of her sister and the babies.

  It dawned on me that Lettie wasn’t meeting a reporter to pin Frida’s murder on Gordon. “You’re planning on selling these pictures. What news organization agreed to meet with you?” I demanded.

  She mumbled the name of one of the most notorious newspapers out there. Their reputation had dropped so low that the White House Correspondents’ Organization had banned their journalists from attending any White House press events.

  I reached out my hand to help Lettie back to her feet. “You’re going to sell pictures of your own sister and newborn nephews to a tabloid?”

  Lettie tossed her arms around my neck and burst out sobbing. “They were the only ones who agreed to pay me.”

  Chapter Thirty

  No news at 4:30 a.m. is good.

  —CLAUDIA “LADY BIRD” JOHNSON, FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES (1963–1969)

  LETTIE clung to me with her arms wrapped around my shoulders like an exhausted child as I guided her back to the White House. “I’m such a failure, Cathy,” she wailed as we entered through the North Portico.

  Chief Usher Ambrose Jones stepped out of his office, located next to the front door, to see what the commotion was about. When he spotted Lettie in hysterics, he made haste backtracking to his office and closed the door behind him.

  “How can I ever face Mags again?” Lettie released me and turned around and around in the large entrance hall. “She’s so perfect. Look at this place. She’s the freaking First Lady of the United States. She’s never made any mistakes in her life. Not one.” Sobbing with renewed vigor, she collapsed against me again.

  “That’s not true, Lettie. Just this summer Margaret realized she’d been neglecting some of the most important power players in Washington. Her oversight threatened to collapse President Bradley’s political support structure from the inside out.”

  She lifted her head from my damp shoulder. “Really? She did that?”

  I nodded. “We all make mistakes. It’s the owning up to our mistakes and doing what needs to be done to make it right that defines us, that gives us grace. Are you willing to do that?”

  “What has happened?” President Bradley demanded, giving Lettie the perfect opportunity to do the right thing. Dressed in a suit with his tie loosened and his coat draped over his arm, he had a strained expression that made me wonder if this was one more crisis than he was prepared to handle today. Even so, his gait increased in length as he closed the distance between us in the grand entrance hall. “Lettie? What’s wrong?”

  When his personal secretary surged forward to intercept his sobbing sister-in-law, he waved her off. “I’ll take care of this.”

  “Oh, John, I am so sorry!” Lettie cried.

  “Not here,” he said and looked genuinely concerned for his wife’s sister as he led us into the adjacent Green Room. He took the time to close each of its many doors.

  Thomas Jefferson once used the Green Room as a dining room with a green floor covering. James Madison converted the room to a sitting room, which was its use today. In this very room in 1812, Madison signed the nation’s first declaration of war. Two years later the British, in retaliation, burned the White House to the ground. And had—apparently—been the reason a priceless treasure had been buried and lost somewhere in the South Lawn.

  President Bradley didn’t look as if he was thinking about the history of the room with its green silk-covered walls, or how the events that had happened in this very spot two hundred years ago may have led to a very modern murder. He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. “I’ve been patient with you,” he said to Lettie.

  This was a private family moment I had no business witnessing. I tried to quietly move toward the door, but Lettie refused to loosen her grip on my arm.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone,” she whispered, squeezing my arm with bruising strength. “It’s just—just that—”

  “You’ve been drinking again,” Bradley said not unkindly.

  Lettie nodded.

  “Did it start before or after your troubles at the college and with your marriage?”

  “Before.” Her voice sounded small, distant. “I—I met . . .”

  “Another man, Lettie? Again?” Bradley walked over to gaze into a round gilded mirror hanging on the far wall. “And I suppose you liked to go out drinking with him?”

  She pressed her face to my shoulder and started sobbing again. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean for him to . . . He loaned me money. I don’t even remember what I spent it on. But when it was gone, he loaned me more money.”

  “Not again, Lettie,” Bradley said, still gazing into the mirror as if he could wish his problems away. “How much this time?”

  “He said that he loved me and didn’t need it back right away. But then things changed. He’s been threatening to go to the press. I thought that maybe I could use . . .”

  Bradley turned away from the mirror. “I don’t understand.”

  Lettie looked to me for help. I nodded encouragingly. This was something she needed to own up to. In halting sentences, she explained to her brother-in-law her money troubles and how she’d planned t
o sell pictures of his wife and two young babies.

  “Do you have the pictures?” He held out his hand.

  “Cathy has them,” Lettie said.

  Without bothering to correct Lettie, I handed the President the folder. He nodded as he looked through the pile of pictures. “These are all very similar to the shots we’re going to release to the press tomorrow morning.”

  Lettie sniffled. “I know. Although I needed the money I didn’t want to hurt Mags and her boys. But it seems I’ve hurt her. And I don’t have the money. I’ve gotten myself into a real pickle, John.”

  “Yes, you have.” He pulled her into his arms and held her as she cried some more. “But you’re family, Lettie. We’ll take care of this together. And we’ll get you help. I promise. We won’t let you face this alone.”

  Smiling to myself, I started quietly for the door.

  “Casey,” Bradley whispered over Lettie’s shoulder. “Thank you.”

  I nodded.

  • • •

  NOT TEN FEET OUTSIDE THE GREEN ROOM I RAN into Marcel Beauchamp. His round belly bounced as he followed me across the colonnade in the entrance hall. “Casey, the President, is he in that room? I have a desperate need to speak with him.”

  “He’s busy right now. Perhaps his secretary is still waiting somewhere near here?” I looked around, but the entrance hall was now curiously empty.

  “It is most urgent that I get an extension. Monday is impossible. Creativity cannot be rushed,” Marcel explained.

  “I doubt he’ll have time to talk with you,” I warned. But he looked so upset, with his round flushed cheeks and quivering brow, I wanted to help him. “Have you spoken with the First Lady’s secretary?”

  “Mais oui, I have. No one in the East Wing understands the artistic process. I’m sure President Bradley, he is a smart man, will give me the additional time. You understand the need for time, do you not? With Gordon, he is to be charged with the murder tomorrow. It must be most troubling to you, with your work to clear his name. Have you found your proof? I overheard you tell the gendarmes that you know how to find the treasure Lettie has been so intent on uncovering. Have you done so? Do you know where the treasure is hidden?”